The death of newspapers?

A video report on old media — newsprint — in this new digital age by the editors of The Seattle Times, The Seattle P-I, The Stranger and crosscut.org. An interesting overview about news consumption, news delivery systems and news content. Frankly, I read the New York Times most often because I have the app on my iphone. And I wake up every morning to KPLU-FM.

5 responses to “The death of newspapers?”

OMG! Rod Mar is done at the Seattle Times! I’ve followed his blog since he started it a couple of years ago. It’s already linked here under “Photojournalism” but here is the post

I watched the video as well. Seems the two daily editors are stuck thinking about how to get revenue from ads, but that David Brewster might be on to something at Crosscut.com.

Trouble is, as new technology gives more people access to the internet and online news content, less people will subscribe to or read the print editions. The result of that, as was pointed out in the video, will be that readership goes up online, but ad revenue will go way down, forcing those companies to make painful cuts (i.e. Rod Mar). Of course, without much money coming in, the quality of the journalism will go down as fewer and fewer staff are forced to take on more and more responsibility. So we’ll see tons of people reading really crappy news content.

It will be interesting to see how the Times fills the gap left by Mr. Mar. For those who don’t know, he shot what seems like about 80% of their sports coverage as well as some spot news and feature images.

Anyway, to wrap up this comment, I’ll ask some questions that I don’t have the answer to, but maybe will generate discussion:

If the newspapers are such an important part of a successful democracy, and they’re in such deep financial doo-doo, then why is the general public so clueless about the crisis journalism faces? Shouldn’t newspapers, for the sake of their own survival or evolution, report that to the public?

And, no, Romanesko doesn’t count. While it is a good resource, I think most folks have never heard of ‘Roma…what?’

And lastly, what’s wrong with subsidizing news organizations with tax money? The BBC and NPR work that way. Why couldn’t others?

I mean, jeez, we almost bailed out GM and Chrysler so they could keep on making Hummers and 300s sporting V8-Hemi engines? And we can’t bail out the Fourth Estate?